For thousands of years back you could trade people for cows, owning your life is a massive historical misunderstanding.
You could own the Mona Lisa. You could own the original Dante’s inferno. For thousands of years there wasn’t the technology to have a copy of the Iliad, then there was and you could have a copy that wasn’t man-made, the press was born. You couldn’t have a copy of a painting without a massive spending on a replica, then in 1600 in Japan with wooden blocks they mass distributed art of Hokusai. You couldn’t own music until you could. You couldn’t own performances until you could.
Those were never moral or logical reasons not to, the technology just didn’t exists. Now the technology does exist and you say that because it didn’t before, then it’s a fluke?
For most of human history people died at early ages, we should go back to that and ditch all antibiotics I guess then, if “history” is the bar you’re measuring “moral”.
Also, guess what, the architect of the work was never in control of their art nor had the “moral authority” of how their work is consumed. Do you really thing that Homer personally went and trained everyone who wanted to interpret the Iliad? Your whole argument is based in something that didn’t even existed in the first place with tons of examples of the contrary that the only thing I can think is that you’re trolling or severely brainwashed.
They sold a product, not an “experience”. Without massive access and preservation of art in all forms civilization couldn’t even begin to grow as fast as it did in the last thousand years.
And before anything else, the mere concept of “owning” is the single most important part of capitalism, if they want to play the “owning” game then we should all be able to play the game. Also historically “owning” didn’t exist. We should course correct to the one true way of tribadism and nomads. I guess.
You are making a massive leap in logic by equating the development of human rights and medicine with the legal mechanics of creative ownership. No one is arguing we should go back to the dark ages just for the sake of tradition. The point is that the fundamental nature of intellectual labor did not change just because we invented a way to print it on plastic.
You claim that we could not own music or performances until the technology existed, and then suddenly we could. But that is legally and factually false. Even after the printing press was invented, or the phonograph, or the Hokusai woodblocks, the consumer still did not own the art. You owned the paper. You owned the wax cylinder. You owned the block of wood. The rights to the creation itself always remained with the creator or their publisher. You are still confusing the physical container with the intellectual labor itself.
But the biggest hole in your argument is that you are still completely ignoring the reality of the medium. You bring up Homer and the Iliad. The Iliad is an ancient oral tradition and a piece of public domain folklore. It is a completely irrelevant comparison to the modern reality of proprietary software and closed digital ecosystems. You’re comparing living, breathing digital infrastructure to static objects. The Mona Lisa, Dante’s Inferno, and woodblock prints. Those are static, finished products. Once Dante finished writing, his labor was done. You can read his book for a century and it requires zero additional effort from him.
Modern software and video games are not static objects. They require active, daily labor to function. They need continuous server hosting, security patches, database management, and network infrastructure. Hokusai did not have to pay a monthly server bill to keep his woodblock visible in your house.
If you buy a copy of a modern digital service and demand the right to own and access it forever for a single upfront fee, you are demanding that the developers provide uncompensated labor and pay for your server access out of their own pockets for the rest of your life.
You can champion the preservation of art all you want, and on that front, almost everyone agrees with you. Archives and historians need legal pathways to preserve digital history. But archival preservation is not the same thing as consumer entitlement. You bought a license to access a digital venue. You did not buy the right to force engineers to work for you for free in perpetuity.
When you buy a painting, a book, or a horseshoe, the creator’s labor ends the second you buy it. The object just sits there, existing on its own. Software doesn’t do that.
Because of the reality of how technology works, code doesn’t just sit in a vacuum forever. Operating systems update, hardware architectures change, server protocols shift, and security certificates expire. If software is left completely alone, it eventually breaks (a concept known in IT as “software rot”).
To keep a game, especially a modern one, functional and playable for a decade or more, engineers have to actively maintain it. They have to patch it for new operating systems, migrate server infrastructure, and update APIs.
So, when someone pays a one-time fee of $60 and demands that their software remain perfectly functional until the end of time, they aren’t just demanding ownership of a static object. They are demanding that a team of engineers continuously update, patch, and maintain the infrastructure for that code indefinitely, without ever being paid for that ongoing labor.
That is what “engineers to work for you for free in perpetuity” means. Pretending that software is a static object like a book ignores the reality that demanding permanent functionality from code requires perpetual, unpaid maintenance from its creators.
What the hell are you talking about. John Nintendo himself didn’t had to pay anyone to make Mupen64. I assure you that Michael Sony didn’t had to pay to his engineer so Bloodborne could be played outside a PS4.
No one. Absolutely no one is asking that Sony or any other company release patches forever and that I could play Crash Bash in a PS5 or boicot. My PS4 broke years ago, I dumped my Bloodborne copy and play it again on my PC. Sony didn’t had to pay anyone a single cent for that to happen.
I’m really curious of who are you listening that made you think that the issue with killing physical media is “I want support forever”…
Have you heard about GoG?
Just to be clear, not being able to access a game in any way after the publisher decides it’s not worth it is indeed the core of all of these.
No one is arguing they have to keep their servers and games running forever. It has never been a part of the conversation.
There’s much more than “you support it forever or don’t support it at all”. GoG allows you to download the game installer and do with it whatever you want. Buying a physical copy means you can play the 1.0.0 Cyberpunk in you PS3 even after the store closes. Even if your PS3 completely breaks, you can emulate it because you have access to the game no matter what happens in the future.
Reducing games access to one singular source that no one can have access is what is happening. There will be not offline installer, no game to emulate or preserve, no mods, no local play, nothing, and literally, the only thing they have to do is nothing.
You are shifting the goalposts from the legal reality of consumer ownership to the entirely separate topic of digital preservation. It is true that GoG provides an incredibly consumer-friendly service, but you are still conflating a generous licensing model with actual ownership. When you download an offline installer from GoG, you are still bound by their End User License Agreement. They are simply choosing to distribute their intellectual labor without the enforcement mechanism of DRM. It is a fantastic business model, but it is a distribution choice made by the publisher, not an inherent right held by the consumer.
You also claim that to allow offline preservation, publishers literally only have to do “nothing.” That is completely false. Disentangling a modern game from its backend architecture, stripping out telemetry, removing third-party matchmaking APIs, and compiling a standalone offline installer requires significant, active engineering labor. You are once again demanding that a studio perform uncompensated work just to satisfy your desire for a permanent archive.
Furthermore, the idea that a publisher withdrawing access to a game is some unprecedented cultural crime completely ignores the history of art. For centuries, masterpieces have been purchased and locked away in private collections, corporate vaults, or family estates, completely inaccessible to the public. Often, creators themselves choose to destroy their own work, withdraw it from circulation, or refuse to publish it because they are dissatisfied with it. It is the absolute, fundamental prerogative of the legal owner of a piece of art to decide if, how, and when the public gets to view it.
If a publisher decides a game is no longer financially viable, or if they simply do not want it to exist in the public sphere anymore, they have the absolute moral and legal authority to pull the plug and lock it in the vault. You are paying for a temporary window of access to their intellectual labor. You do not have a moral right to demand they engineer a permanent offline off-ramp just because you are afraid the exhibition might eventually close.
So… We should go backwards instead of forward?
For thousands of years back you could trade people for cows, owning your life is a massive historical misunderstanding.
You could own the Mona Lisa. You could own the original Dante’s inferno. For thousands of years there wasn’t the technology to have a copy of the Iliad, then there was and you could have a copy that wasn’t man-made, the press was born. You couldn’t have a copy of a painting without a massive spending on a replica, then in 1600 in Japan with wooden blocks they mass distributed art of Hokusai. You couldn’t own music until you could. You couldn’t own performances until you could.
Those were never moral or logical reasons not to, the technology just didn’t exists. Now the technology does exist and you say that because it didn’t before, then it’s a fluke?
For most of human history people died at early ages, we should go back to that and ditch all antibiotics I guess then, if “history” is the bar you’re measuring “moral”.
Also, guess what, the architect of the work was never in control of their art nor had the “moral authority” of how their work is consumed. Do you really thing that Homer personally went and trained everyone who wanted to interpret the Iliad? Your whole argument is based in something that didn’t even existed in the first place with tons of examples of the contrary that the only thing I can think is that you’re trolling or severely brainwashed.
They sold a product, not an “experience”. Without massive access and preservation of art in all forms civilization couldn’t even begin to grow as fast as it did in the last thousand years.
And before anything else, the mere concept of “owning” is the single most important part of capitalism, if they want to play the “owning” game then we should all be able to play the game. Also historically “owning” didn’t exist. We should course correct to the one true way of tribadism and nomads. I guess.
You are making a massive leap in logic by equating the development of human rights and medicine with the legal mechanics of creative ownership. No one is arguing we should go back to the dark ages just for the sake of tradition. The point is that the fundamental nature of intellectual labor did not change just because we invented a way to print it on plastic.
You claim that we could not own music or performances until the technology existed, and then suddenly we could. But that is legally and factually false. Even after the printing press was invented, or the phonograph, or the Hokusai woodblocks, the consumer still did not own the art. You owned the paper. You owned the wax cylinder. You owned the block of wood. The rights to the creation itself always remained with the creator or their publisher. You are still confusing the physical container with the intellectual labor itself.
But the biggest hole in your argument is that you are still completely ignoring the reality of the medium. You bring up Homer and the Iliad. The Iliad is an ancient oral tradition and a piece of public domain folklore. It is a completely irrelevant comparison to the modern reality of proprietary software and closed digital ecosystems. You’re comparing living, breathing digital infrastructure to static objects. The Mona Lisa, Dante’s Inferno, and woodblock prints. Those are static, finished products. Once Dante finished writing, his labor was done. You can read his book for a century and it requires zero additional effort from him.
Modern software and video games are not static objects. They require active, daily labor to function. They need continuous server hosting, security patches, database management, and network infrastructure. Hokusai did not have to pay a monthly server bill to keep his woodblock visible in your house.
If you buy a copy of a modern digital service and demand the right to own and access it forever for a single upfront fee, you are demanding that the developers provide uncompensated labor and pay for your server access out of their own pockets for the rest of your life.
You can champion the preservation of art all you want, and on that front, almost everyone agrees with you. Archives and historians need legal pathways to preserve digital history. But archival preservation is not the same thing as consumer entitlement. You bought a license to access a digital venue. You did not buy the right to force engineers to work for you for free in perpetuity.
What do you mean with “engineers works for free in perpetuity”?
When you buy a painting, a book, or a horseshoe, the creator’s labor ends the second you buy it. The object just sits there, existing on its own. Software doesn’t do that.
Because of the reality of how technology works, code doesn’t just sit in a vacuum forever. Operating systems update, hardware architectures change, server protocols shift, and security certificates expire. If software is left completely alone, it eventually breaks (a concept known in IT as “software rot”).
To keep a game, especially a modern one, functional and playable for a decade or more, engineers have to actively maintain it. They have to patch it for new operating systems, migrate server infrastructure, and update APIs.
So, when someone pays a one-time fee of $60 and demands that their software remain perfectly functional until the end of time, they aren’t just demanding ownership of a static object. They are demanding that a team of engineers continuously update, patch, and maintain the infrastructure for that code indefinitely, without ever being paid for that ongoing labor.
That is what “engineers to work for you for free in perpetuity” means. Pretending that software is a static object like a book ignores the reality that demanding permanent functionality from code requires perpetual, unpaid maintenance from its creators.
What the hell are you talking about. John Nintendo himself didn’t had to pay anyone to make Mupen64. I assure you that Michael Sony didn’t had to pay to his engineer so Bloodborne could be played outside a PS4.
No one. Absolutely no one is asking that Sony or any other company release patches forever and that I could play Crash Bash in a PS5 or boicot. My PS4 broke years ago, I dumped my Bloodborne copy and play it again on my PC. Sony didn’t had to pay anyone a single cent for that to happen.
I’m really curious of who are you listening that made you think that the issue with killing physical media is “I want support forever”…
That is literally the argument. That if a developer or publisher decides to stop publishing a digital title that your license is no longer usable…
Have you heard about GoG? Just to be clear, not being able to access a game in any way after the publisher decides it’s not worth it is indeed the core of all of these.
No one is arguing they have to keep their servers and games running forever. It has never been a part of the conversation.
There’s much more than “you support it forever or don’t support it at all”. GoG allows you to download the game installer and do with it whatever you want. Buying a physical copy means you can play the 1.0.0 Cyberpunk in you PS3 even after the store closes. Even if your PS3 completely breaks, you can emulate it because you have access to the game no matter what happens in the future.
Reducing games access to one singular source that no one can have access is what is happening. There will be not offline installer, no game to emulate or preserve, no mods, no local play, nothing, and literally, the only thing they have to do is nothing.
You are shifting the goalposts from the legal reality of consumer ownership to the entirely separate topic of digital preservation. It is true that GoG provides an incredibly consumer-friendly service, but you are still conflating a generous licensing model with actual ownership. When you download an offline installer from GoG, you are still bound by their End User License Agreement. They are simply choosing to distribute their intellectual labor without the enforcement mechanism of DRM. It is a fantastic business model, but it is a distribution choice made by the publisher, not an inherent right held by the consumer.
You also claim that to allow offline preservation, publishers literally only have to do “nothing.” That is completely false. Disentangling a modern game from its backend architecture, stripping out telemetry, removing third-party matchmaking APIs, and compiling a standalone offline installer requires significant, active engineering labor. You are once again demanding that a studio perform uncompensated work just to satisfy your desire for a permanent archive.
Furthermore, the idea that a publisher withdrawing access to a game is some unprecedented cultural crime completely ignores the history of art. For centuries, masterpieces have been purchased and locked away in private collections, corporate vaults, or family estates, completely inaccessible to the public. Often, creators themselves choose to destroy their own work, withdraw it from circulation, or refuse to publish it because they are dissatisfied with it. It is the absolute, fundamental prerogative of the legal owner of a piece of art to decide if, how, and when the public gets to view it.
If a publisher decides a game is no longer financially viable, or if they simply do not want it to exist in the public sphere anymore, they have the absolute moral and legal authority to pull the plug and lock it in the vault. You are paying for a temporary window of access to their intellectual labor. You do not have a moral right to demand they engineer a permanent offline off-ramp just because you are afraid the exhibition might eventually close.